Within the Ruins Left By Another
by the.eye.does.not.SEE
Summary: A series one-shots after Jane and Kurt lose their baby. AU/Futurefics.
1. You Had a Nightmare

**A/N** : I've been posting these stories on tumblr, and figured I should bring them over to FFN, too. This first one is in reply to a prompt I received (Jeller + "You had a nightmare."). The stories that will follow this one will be in the same universe, but not necessarily in chronological order. I tend to write in this world during the dead of night, on off-days, and at random intervals, so I can't promise any sort of regular updating. But, I've got this to start with, and I hope you enjoy reading it.

* * *

 _"You had a nightmare."_

"Sorry," he mumbles, still half-asleep even after she's shaken him awake. He pushes himself up on one elbow as he comes back to reality, which, she guesses, is no different from his nightmare. "Did I wake you?"

"No," she lies, obviously, but he doesn't seem to notice.

Jane watches him in the dark as he rubs a hand over one side of his face, and then pinches the interior corners of his eyes. She feels her throat tug at the sight of him so exhausted; even in the darkness of their bedroom, she can see the sagging curves under his eyes. She knows she must look similar; she hasn't slept well in months, either, not since they lost the baby.

And despite the exhaustion that comes with such constant insomnia, part of her hasn't even wanted to sleep. She dreads dreaming the way he's been dreaming, dreads having her erstwhile fantasies turned into nightmares. Living with the reality day by day is bad enough; she can't handle it in her sleep, too.

Kurt groans softly as he lurches up into a sitting position, and then gets heavily to his feet. Jane watches him from bed as he shuffles over to the bathroom, and then shuts the door behind him. She listens to the water run in their silent apartment, and pictures him splashing it on his face. Pictures him looking himself in the mirror, long and hard, and not liking what he sees reflected there.

She can't say she blames him. She doesn't like looking in the mirror much anymore, either. But then, she's never much liked looking into the eyes of murderers.

He doesn't say anything when he comes back to bed. He just pulls the covers up, and slips into his side, lying down in silence. He doesn't make a move to hold her or touch her or kiss her; they haven't interacted like that in months, at least not with any feeling.

She stares at him in the dark as he situates himself, pulling the blanket up over his shoulder with his left hand. A sliver of light not blocked by their drapes falls across the bed, and for a moment as he shifts around, it illuminates the golden wedding band on his ring finger.

She wishes the sight of it made her feel good, and proud, like it used to, but now it just makes her feel sick and alone. She hasn't felt like his wife in months. And it isn't just because they lost the baby; it isn't just because they haven't been having sex.

It's because she doesn't recognize this person she sleeps beside every night anymore. He's cold and distant and so interior that at times she doesn't even feel like he's here with her even when he's close enough to touch. She knows he's suffering, of course he is, but the way he does it is doing more damage than necessary, she thinks. It can't be good for him to hold all this in, to continually keep himself calm and cool when she knows he must be as torn apart inside as she is—emotionally, at least, if not physically.

 _We should talk about it_.

She could say the words, she knows. She could ask him to talk; she could demand that he talk. But she can't bring herself to do it. She can't hurt him any more than she already has.

So instead of saying anything, instead of insisting that they have a conversation, she just reaches a hand out, and places it tentatively on his cheek. He closes his eyes at her touch, sighing softly through his nose, and she does her best to swallow the anxious fear in her. They touch each other so little these days, she keeps waiting for the moment he'll push her away.

But he doesn't tonight. He just shuts his eyes and lies there beneath her hand, and she tries to feel good about that. She tries to paint a nice picture from this moment: perhaps he's needed this touch all day; perhaps he's been craving this small bit of comfort all week.

But she doubts it. Likely, he's just doing his best not to snap at her; doing his best not to pull away as he likely wants to.

She brushes her fingers lightly against him, searching for the skin of his cheek but finding only the rough hair of his now-full beard. She hates that beard; his misery beard, as she thinks of it privately. It's horrible and coarse and too long and its existence makes it so that any and every time she looks at him, she knows exactly how long it's been since their baby left them. Because just like they haven't really spoken or touched or kissed or made love since their baby died, he hasn't shaved.

She thinks about it, about that little tiny human that was, for a couple months, theirs, and she wonders if it knew, somehow, that something was wrong. Did it know that they'd be bad parents? Could it foresee them growing unhappy and resentful and distant like this? Did it not so much abandon them, as save itself?

"Anything I can do?" she asks finally, just for something to say, something to drown out both her thoughts and his own. "Anything at all, Kurt?"

"No," he whispers, shaking his head, as she knew he would. "There's nothing you can do."

He's trying to reassure her, she knows. He's trying to say things are out of her control; he's trying to say that she shouldn't bother herself comforting him. But still, when the words come out they hit her like a slap in the face, because it's true— _there's nothing she can do,_ certainly not anything _right._ She couldn't even keep a baby alive inside her for four months; no wonder he doesn't want any help from her. All she does is kill things.

She withdraws her hand quickly, curling onto her side away from him, so once she's situated, all he has to look at is his own name on her back. She wraps a weak, powerless arm around herself, her hand instinctually moving to cup her stomach, even though there's nothing there left to hold, not even the little rise that used to linger in the few weeks after the baby had left.

She cranes her neck, staring down at her stomach, willing it to be full and round and full of life as it was just a few months ago, as it was, perhaps, in her husband's nightmare. She stares at the myriad tattoos inked there, frowning at each one, and feeling her eyes fill, not because they are there, but because they're still _the same_ as they were before. She feels like they should be distorted, ripped, torn-apart; they should mirror the horror that went on inside.

It doesn't take more than a couple seconds, and then, like clockwork, she's practically sobbing outright, her whole body shaking, convulsing, her teeth tearing into her bottom lip so hard they draw blood, just so he won't hear—

But of course he does. It's so quiet in their apartment, he could probably hear every breath she took before they started coming in gasps. His hand is at her back immediately, warm through her tank top, and though she knows he's trying to comfort her, his touch just makes her shake more, and cry harder.

"Oh, Janie..." His voice is ragged, exhausted, hurt. He hates seeing her cry, she knows. That's part of the reason why she put her back to him in the first place. "Hey, now..."

"I'm sorry," she whispers, but she hardly gets the words out before he says, "You don't have to apologize."

She ignores his claim like usual. She knows it's a lie. She could spend the rest of her life apologizing to him for losing his child, and it still wouldn't be enough.

She swipes at her eyes angrily with the butt of her palm, all but gouging her eyes out in an attempt to rid her face of tears but not caring. It takes longer for her breathing to even out, for her heart to slow its frantic, fearful beat. But eventually even that part of her calms down, eventually she's in-control enough to roll back over and face him again.

The look on his face only makes her want to start crying again, and she has to press her lips together, hard, to keep herself in check.

"I'm sorry," she chokes out, her hands clenched tight into fists because she doesn't trust herself to touch him anymore without something bad happening. "I'm so sorry, I..."

Blessedly, he lets her trail off into nothingness. He doesn't ask her what she's sorry for; he doesn't ask her what else it is she'd wanted to say. He just stares at her, looking so tired and old and just so done, so finished with it all, and eventually she has to shut her eyes, because she can't look at him anymore.

She counts: one minute, two. She takes a few deep breaths. She tries to get rid of the horrible stretching, painful sensation in her throat. She only succeeds at a couple of these endeavors, but it has to be enough. She opens her eyes, and finds his, still before her as they were a few minutes ago, still wide open and concerned and anxious.

She tries her hand at a reassuring smile and, from the lack of change on his face, likely fails at this, too. "You know that I love you," she whispers, not knowing what else to say anymore. "I really love you."

Her husband nods, and smiles a little, but it doesn't even begin to light up his face the way it used to.

"Yeah," he murmurs, tired again. "I know, Jane."

It takes him a couple seconds to realize that wasn't the proper response. She listens to him start to curse himself before he shakes his head, closes his eyes, and calms down. Cuts himself off.

"Love you too," he says finally. His voice is quiet, measured. Rote.

She watches him say what needs to be said, and wonders if the lie tastes as sour coming out of his mouth as it does meeting her ears.

* * *

 **A/N** : Thanks very much for reading. I would love to hear your thoughts.


	2. And All I've Got Is Her

Title: _**And All I've Got Is Her**_

 **A/N** : A short follow-up/prequel to the earlier ask/chapter. I've been wanting to write something from Kurt's POV for a while. For extra misery, listen to 'One' on repeat by Damien Rice while reading.

* * *

Once they're led into the operating room and left alone, he helps her change. He unties her shoes for her, and takes off her socks, and helps her remove her bloody pants and underwear. His vision swims at all the red; his stomach gags at the smell, but he forces himself to focus, and do this for her. He wets a handful of tissues and does his best to wipe away as much of the blood between her thighs as he can, and then he ties her into one of those surgical gowns with the open back. For once, she says nothing about him babying her. She does not tease, does not complain, does not say a single word. More than once he has to keep an eye on her stomach so he can be certain she's still breathing.

After she's changed and settled on the exam table, he grabs her soiled clothes and crosses the room to deposit them into the red metal bin marked 'Infectious Waste' in all caps. He steps on the footpad to open it, and is just about to shove the evidence of their loss inside its dark depths when she finally speaks.

"Please don't," she whispers from across the room.

He starts at the sound of her voice—he can no longer recall the last time she spoke to him, or what she said—and he turns. He finds her head twisted to the side around the headrest, watching him. He can't help but think that she looks just like she did the first time he ever saw her: in a harshly lit exam room, lost and overwhelmed, pleading for recognition.

"Please don't throw it all away."

He swallows, hard, his throat tearing at him as he tries to breathe. "Jane…"

"It's all I have left," she whispers. " _Please_ , Kurt." Her words scrape against each other as they comes out, and he wants to close his eyes, wants to turn away from her and her pain and her begging, but he cannot. He just stares at her, and watches her chin start to shake, and her eyes fill and spill over with tears, and then her body's wracking back and forth on the exam table, and finally, he snaps back into himself. He closes the lid of the infectious waste bin without filling it, and hurries back over to her side.

She takes the clothes from him without pausing to draw a breath or organize them. She just grabs her bloody jeans and her bloody underwear and she balls them up into a pile and hugs them to her chest. He watches, numb, not knowing what to say or do as she presses her face into the denim. Her nose is mere inches from the bloodstain, and he forces himself to beat back the urge to throw up.

He used to imagine her doing something like this, with their child. He used to fantasize about it, during late night when he couldn't sleep and early mornings when he would rise before her and just lie there in bed, watching her. He'd pictured her with their baby: pictured her holding it, nursing it, rocking it to sleep. Pictured her singing to it, and cooing to it, asking it to say _Ma-ma._

Watching her now, he can't help but think he jinxed things. He'd imagined too much, hoped too much, expected too much. Loved too much.

And this is what he gets.

* * *

He stays with her in the operating room just long enough to watch her be put under for the D&C. In the minutes before the "ten-nine-eight-seven" countdown, he holds her hand and promises that he won't leave her side, that he will be there with her the whole time, because that's what she asked of him, begged of him.

Once she's out, though, he slips his hand from hers and all but runs to the door. The attending obstetrician starts a bit at his rush, but does not call him back, or ask what he's doing, or where he's going. Watching the husbands fall apart and turn tail: that must all be part of a day's work for these doctors.

He wants to say he's different from the others. He wants to say he's a brave man; he wants to say he's a loyal husband. He wants to say he's taken bullets and he's lowered himself to one knee; he wants to say he loves that woman lying there on the table more than he loves himself, or anyone else. He wants to say a lot of things; he wants to say so many things. But just like everything he said to Jane in the seconds before she went under, he knows anything that might come out of his mouth right now will be a lie. So he says nothing as he flees.

The door swings shut gently behind him with a barely audible _woosh_. He wishes it would slam instead.

* * *

He ends up down the hall, in the only private space he can find: one of those double-sized family bathrooms, the only place here with a lock he can bolt himself and a room that can be all his own. It's squeezed in between the men's and women's rooms, and he makes a beeline for it the second he spots it. He barely manages to lock the deadbolt on the door before he sinks to the floor, sobbing.

Even as he curls into himself, shaking and struggling to breathe through the tears, the irony of the setting is not lost on him. He does not belong in this place made for families, not even if it is to grieve.

* * *

He makes it back to the operating room just as the procedure's wrapping up. The obstetrician sends the assisting nurse out of the room just after Kurt enters it, and he lingers by the door, suddenly frightened. He looks at the woman standing there in scrubs before him, and he wonders if he's going to get yelled at now. Is that part of the job? After the doc patches up the wife, does she chew out the husband?

But all the redheaded woman does is give him a weak nod of acknowledgment, and explains quietly what will happen next. She talks about recovery time and residual bleeding and cramping. She warns against infection and mentions a number of medications to use if the pain becomes too intense. She talks about reasons to come back for further treatment and reasons not to.

Kurt nods at it all, but he's hardly listening. He can't stop staring at Jane. Though she's been weaned off the anesthesia, she's still out of it, not yet conscious. Part of him, very briefly, hopes that she never wakes up, for her sake. Surely whatever nothingness she's lingering in now will be endlessly better than the reality waiting for her.

Kurt jumps when he feels a hand touching her arm. It's the obstetrician, offering him what sympathy she can behind her official veneer.

"I'll go over it all again once you're wife's awake," she tells him.

Kurt knows the words are supposed to be comforting, reassuring. Kind. But all he feels when she says them is a deep, violent tearing throughout what feels like his entire body.

The woman leaves without another word, and then a pair of nurses come in, to help wheel Jane down the hall.

* * *

She's conscious by the time they've settled her into the temporary recovery room.

"We'll give you a couple hours alone," one of the nurses says kindly. She indicates a little blue button on the wall, within Jane's reach. "If you need anything, or if you're in pain, or have questions, please don't hesitate to call. We'll come right to you."

Jane nods numbly, her head hardly moving. Kurt watches her and thinks her head must feel heavy. His certainly does. It hasn't stopped pounding since his flight to the bathroom, or maybe since the drive here, but he doesn't mention this to her. She is dealing with enough, he knows. There is not room, or reason, for his pain right now.

After a minute of awkwardly standing by her bedside like an out-of-town guest, he takes the seat next to her and attempts to settle himself. He watches her do the same: watches her gingerly situate herself so she can receive the most comfort possible. He doubts it's much.

He is relieved when she finally stops moving, and sees that she's curled herself a bit towards him. He would be lying if he said he hadn't been scared that she might put her back to him, that she might cut him off like he cut her off earlier in the operating room. It takes him a couple seconds to remember that she didn't see that, that she'd already been unconscious. But still, the guilt tears at him.

He had promised, when they'd married, that he'd stand by her side: in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad.

And today, the second she had her back turned, the second she needed him, he ran. Like a fucking coward.

He opens his mouth to confess, to apologize, to beg forgiveness and accept condemnation, but before he can say a word, she starts speaking. Her eyes are closed, and her face is pressed into the pillow, and she says it so quietly that he thinks he isn't meant to hear.

But he hears anyway.

"I wish I could just up and die, too."

* * *

They do not speak on the ride home. The obstetrician gave them a list of expectations, of approved painkillers, or to-dos and to-donts. She smartly gave it to them in writing, because neither Kurt, nor Jane, had listened much. Jane holds it in her hands as they drive, along with a plastic bag that holds her bloody clothes and, a new addition, the bloody towel she'd sat on on the ride over. When he opened the passenger door for her and saw it sitting there, Kurt almost threw up again, like he did in the bathroom earlier. But Jane picked up the towel as if it were something to be treasured, and held it close by its clean edges for a moment before adding it to the bag.

It's only after they're home, and she goes into the bathroom and comes out a moment later, that she finally speaks.

"I need to go to the store," she says, and he closes his eyes, fighting back the urge to refuse. He hardly managed to drive them home safely without getting into an accident; how does she expect him to drive back out? How does she expect him to so much as walk down the street?

"What do you need?" he asks finally, covering his eyes with a tired hand. God, it feels good to close them. It feels good to not look at her. "Whatever it is, we can get it tomorrow."

"No, I need to go now," she presses.

"Jane, please—"

"There's going to be bleeding, Kurt. There already is. I need to go to the store now; I don't have anything here."

He drops his hand, and without thinking, his gaze falls to her stomach, then lower, to her crotch. He'd forgotten about the bleeding.

"Right," he says finally, averting his eyes from her as if he is doing something dirty by looking at her, and instead turns to stare at the wood panelling of their apartment's floors instead. "Right, I forgot."

A silent moment passes between them. He's only just realizing how dull and insensitive those words must've sounded when she speaks.

"That must be nice," she whispers. And then she grabs her wallet and walks past him to the door. He follows after her simply because he doesn't know what else he's supposed to do.

* * *

She cries that night, all throughout the night, and though she does so in almost near silence, the weeping still keeps him awake. He can sense her sorrow as easily as his own, and yet it is more painful, more horrible, to be a witness to her suffering than it is to endure his own.

It is made even more horrible by the fact that he doesn't know what to do in this situation. He doesn't know what to say, or how to hold her, or even if he _should_ hold her.

For a while, he just lies next to her and cups her cheek, wiping away each tear as it falls, but after a while that becomes nothing more than an exercise in futility. Together, they become one of those perpetual motion machines: No matter how many tears he wipes away, there are always more to come. And his touch does not seem to be healing or helping like it used to. He briefly considers pulling away, getting up and going to sleep on the couch, but even the thought of leaving her here alone makes him so sick that he can hardly refute the thought without vomiting.

"I'm sorry."

She's the first to say the words, the first to say that little, over-used phrase he should've already said a thousand times today, and yet, somehow hasn't said once.

"I'm so sorry."

Her eyes spill over once more as she whispers the apology, and it isn't until she's repeated it four more times that he finally finds his voice to contradict her.

"You don't have to be sorry," he interrupts her seventh apology gently, his thumb hard at work again at clearing half her face of its tears. "You know this isn't your fault. You know—" He tries to say more, but his throat it too tight, his head hurts too much, and if he sees her shed one more tear, he's going to fucking jump out the window, because he cannot stand to see her suffer like this.

She's silent for a long moment. Such a long moment that he thinks, with something that might've once been joy, _She believes me!_ But then there's a rustle amongst the sheets, and he catches her shaking her head. She's biting her lip, trying to hold in the tears—for him now, he knows; she's trying to do this all for him—but they spill out anyway.

"I couldn't keep him," she cries out finally, the dam breaking once more. "I couldn't keep him safe, I couldn't keep him alive, and I—I—I want you to know that I'm—I'm—"

He's almost grateful when she dissolves into sobs, burrowing himself into her arms, because it means he doesn't have to listen to her try to apologize for something that is, so clearly, his fault. At the end of the day, she had been the home for their baby, the carrier for it. But he'd been the one to put it there, the one to force it into existence.

 _He_ should be apologizing to _her,_ for what he's done.

And he does.

When her sobs don't let up and her shaking doesn't stop, he brings her fully into his arms, crushing her to him, pulling her whole body on top of his. "I am so sorry," he whispers, burying his face in her dark hair, breathing her in as if she is life, or absolution. "Janie, I'm so sorry…" He repeats the words again and again, ignoring the soreness in his throat, ignoring the numbness in his limbs. "I never meant to do this to you, sweetheart. I never meant to hurt you…"

At some point in the night, their roles become reversed, and he is the one weeping inconsolably, and she is the one whispering meaningless comforts. She says her "sorry"s; she says her "I love you"s; she says every right thing in the book.

None of them help.

Near dawn, when their sobbing has stolen both their voices, they grieve silently and hold one another. She's brushing her hand against his stubbled cheek, and he's hugging onto the little rise of her hip, when the sun starts streaming in through the half-closed shades. Jane catches him looking at the coming dawn, and glances over her shoulder and stares as if she does not remember what it is. When she turns back, she's pressing her lips together, and her whole face shaking in an effort not to cry again.

He doesn't even put forth the effort anymore; he just lets the tears go. No point in trying to control what cannot be controlled; he's learned that lesson more than enough in this life already.

* * *

After they finally manage to get out of bed in the morning, and get dressed, they make their way over to the kitchen and make breakfast in silence. Neither of them eats much. He tries to muster up some courage to tell her to eat, to tell her she needs some strength, some nutrition, but he feels like a hypocrite even thinking such things when his bowl of cereal in front of him is untouched and quickly becoming soggy.

After ten minutes, he finally abandons it, and gets up to dump it in the trash. Jane's right behind him, throwing her yogurt and granola into the mix. He takes the bowl from her hands and sets them both in the sink to soak. He watches the water fill one, and then the other, and then he watches them overflow. He can't turn off the faucet. He just stares and stares and stares, watching water cascade over the surface…

Her hand reaches forward and turns off the faucet for him. And then her arms reach forward, circling around his middle and hugging him tightly to her from behind. He thinks about turning, about taking her in his arms as he did last night, but it seems so impossible in the daytime. It seems horrible and ugly and too real. He feels like they should keep their suffering for the nighttime–that way they can try to survive in the interim, right? Isn't that what people do?—but even as he thinks the words, his eyes start to fill again. He grips the edges of the counter, hard, and stares down at his white knuckles as his vision blurs, and clears, and blurs. The tears make very quiet _plop_ ing sounds as the meet the metal of the sink, and the stone of the counter.

"I'm here," Jane whispers into his back, her breath warm even through his t-shirt. "Kurt, I'm here."

He nods at this, sucking in a breath, struggling to keep himself under control.

 _I'm here._

He wishes so much—probably more than she does—that those words meant something real. He wishes they were enough.

He wishes she were enough.

* * *

 **A/N** : Thoughts would be lovely. Thank you for reading.


	3. When Silence Is a Choice

_**A/N** : Based on the prompt, "When silence is a choice, it is an unnerving presence."_

* * *

She hasn't spoken to him since he got discharged from the hospital two days ago. By Kurt's count, that makes it a total of fifty-nine hours and eleven minutes she's been silent. Technically, he thinks, he should add forty-eight more hours to that count; she hardly spoke to him when he _was_ in the hospital. But he prefers to keep the tally as low as possible, even if it's only in his mind. The number of hours your wife spends not talking to you is not generally a record about which you'd like to brag.

He watches her, openly, as they taxi home from visiting Sarah across town, but she refuses to look at him. She stares out the window, or she stares at the license of the driver, photocopied and laminated on the back of his seat. Or she stares down at her hands. With her thumb tucked under her first few fingers, she worries at her wedding ring, her engagement ring, turning them both back and forth. In his periphery, he can see the little rainbows cast by the diamond bounce around the interior of the car, bright and jumpy against the black upholstery. He remembers how he used to tease her when she did that, before the baby. She used to worry her ring a lot: when she was working, when she was reading, when she simply felt like doing it. _Thinking about serving papers?_ he'd always tease, and she'd jump, if caught off-guard, or roll her eyes, if he hadn't managed to surprise her. Always, she followed up with the deadpan _Har-har_ response. He thinks briefly of making the joke again, just to try to break the tension, to get her to talk, but he knows that if he said it now, it wouldn't be a joke anymore. It'd be an honest question. And her ever-present silence, he thinks, would be an honest answer.

She hasn't yelled yet, though, not in the two days since he left the hospital, and he tries to take that as a good sign. Then again, he thinks a second later, not-yelling might be a sign, too. A bad one. He looks at her and he wonders how many divorces start with silences that stretch on for fifty-nine hours, and then further, into eternity. He wonders how many marriages are broken up by a third being: not a person, necessarily, but a presence. Or a lack of one. The silence between them feels like a third being: one that's pushing them further and further apart with each minute that goes by, one that's taking more from both of them every second.

He has tried to do away with their voiceless intruder, he has. He has tried to talk to her, tried to explain, tried to apologize. He's been trying to do it for days, and yet she still hasn't said a word.

She pays the cabbie—she speaks to _him_ , of course—and then leads the way up to their building's front door. She bypasses the elevator in favor of the stairs—they're only three floors up, and they usually walk—but he can't help but wonder if she's doing it on purpose, to punish him. Ascending even the short set of stairs that makes up their front stoop makes him feel like he's breaking his cracked ribs all over again, but he shoves aside the pain and forces one foot in front of the other.

He could, of course, take the elevator alone. But that seems like some sort of defeat, and he's had enough of defeat these last few months. When he finally reaches the third-floor landing, she's left the door open for him, and it seems like some sort of invitation. But when he says her name and she doesn't answer, when he touches her shoulder and she doesn't even turn, he finally gives up. He doesn't know what she wants—he never seems to, anymore—and bereft of other options, he finally just admits to it.

"What do you want me to say?" he demands. When she starts to walk away, shaking her head in sullen silence, he follows her into the kitchen. If his ribs weren't so sore, he'd keep up with her, step for step. As it is, he trails a few feet behind, the exact opposite of impressive. "What can I say to get you to speak to me? Do you want me to apologize, Jane? I can do that." He lifts a hand and starts ticking off offenses at her back. "I'm sorry I got hurt. I'm sorry I dragged you out to the hospital. I'm sorry we have all these bills to pay now because the insurance wouldn't cover it. I'm sorry—"

"If those are the things you think I want you to apologize for, I'm taking you back to the hospital, because clearly you need to get your head examined."

"My head?" For a moment, he's so lost in the fact she's speaking to him again that he doesn't know what she's getting at.

"Yes, your head. Your stupid fucking thick head."

He jerks back, stunned at the vitriol. "Jane, what—"

"Don't pretend not to know," she snaps, turning and pushing past him. Her shoulder slams into his, and he just manages to grab her wrist as she rushes by, but she throws him off with an anger that's so acute it borders violence. "You're stupid as hell, yes, but you know what you did!" she yells. "You _know_ what happened on Tuesday!"

"Yeah, I do," he agrees. "I was there. I was ambushed."

A high-pitched sound rips out from her throat, something between a laugh and a shriek. "Oh! Oh, you were _ambushed_?" She speaks slowly, sweetly, as if to a child. It makes his skin crawl. "Is that what happened, Kurt? Is that the story we're going with? Is that what you're going to say in the report, special agent?"

He swallows, eyeing her nervously. He doesn't like when she does this, when she makes him unsure of himself. He doesn't want to ask, but he can't help it. He can't be on an uneven playing field. He can't not be in control. "What are you talking about?"

"What am I—?" For a second, he thinks she's going to storm off, and leave it there. Because she knows, too, how he craves control—especially now, after the baby. The worst thing she could do right now would be to walk away, leave that question unanswered, the fight unfinished.

But she stays. She speaks.

She is eerily, terrifyingly calm.

"What am I talking about?" she repeats quietly. "I'm talking about Tuesday. I'm talking about the day you decided to go into an unsecured building, alone, with nothing but your sidearm and a flack jacket. I'm talking about the day you decided that just because you call the shots, it also meant you get to take all the risk, too, without consulting or including any of us! I'm talking about _you,_ throwing your life away—"

"I'm not throwing my life away! I'm here, aren't I? I'm alive—"

"You're alive because they _allowed_ you to live, Kurt! Because they wanted to take their goddamn time, _that_ is why you're alive! They could've put a bullet in your head, but no, they wanted to beat the shit out of you first, and now I have to stand here and look at you and _be grateful_ about it, _grateful_ that a group of piece-of-shit thugs wanted to make my husband suffer instead of executing him on the spot! Do you know what I—"

Her voice cracks, shattering through whatever it was she was going to say, and as he listens to her suck in a breath, he feels the sound of it break through him, deeper and more painful than any of his broken ribs, and knows he can't do this much longer. Work, marriage, life—whatever it is with her, he can't do it. He can't listen to her cry like this; he can't listen to her force herself _not_ to cry.

"Do you know what I think?" she whispers finally.

He is frozen, staring. He doesn't know how she's still speaking. Her eyes are getting red again. Or maybe they never stopped being red.

She is waiting, set on pause. She wants an answer. She will not move on until she has one. Somehow, he nods in her direction. _Continue_.

"I think you never would've acted like that—never would have even _thought_ to do something so reckless—if we'd had the baby."

He tries to breathe, tries to speak, but every part of him is tilting in a different direction, every cell in his body is threatening to implode, and he can't do anything but stare at her.

"It's true, isn't it?" She's openly crying now, chin shaking, tears streaming, but she doesn't make a single move to stop herself, or brush it away. "If there were a baby waiting for you at home, you'd be careful. You'd think twice. You wouldn't run after suspects without me and Tasha and Ed at your side. But there's no baby. There's only me. There's just me, so—so you say, _Fuck it_. You dive into firefights and you don't wait for backup and you don't _care_ , not at all, that you still have someone who loves you. I _love you_! Can you even comprehend that, Kurt? Can you recognize that what I feel for you is _real_ , and that it has not and will not be diminished by what happened? Can you—" She reaches out, grabbing onto his shirt. "Jesus Christ, Kurt, can you explain yourself? Please, God, all I want is for you to explain yourself. Tell me it's not about this." Her fingers curl tighter around his collar, pulling him closer. "Please," she whispers, lifting herself up so they're at eye-level. "Please tell me it's not about the baby I lost. Tell me it's not about him. Please..."

Her pleas melt into sobs, her face falling to his chest, and though he tries to do the one thing she's asked, he can't say it. He can't lie to her face like this. All he can do is wrap his arms around her as she cries and whisper that he's sorry. He's so sorry, he will always be sorry, but the more he says it, the less it means anything. What does it matter that he's sorry? It won't bring their baby back. It won't change anything. Sorry means nothing, and he _is_ nothing, worse than nothing, for not being able to think of something better to say.

"Do you promise you'll be careful from here on out?"

Her head lifts from his chest as she speaks, and her hands move from the now wrinkled collar of his shirt to his neck, his cheeks. He closes his eyes at the gentle touch of her hands cupping his face. It feels like a lifetime since she last held him like this, looked up to him like this.

God, he has missed this.

"Promise me," she whispers, and eyes still closed, he bends his head down to hers. Her voice is soft, still, gravelly from tears but not actively weeping, and it draws him in. It reminds him of a time when they could work through any problem ahead of them, when they moved past any obstacle, together. Where did that time go?

"Promise me," she says again, and she is closer now. He can feel the warmth of her breath against his lips now. If he moved forward an inch, an inch and a half, he could taste her. He pictures her lips in the red dark behind his eyelids, and he tries to remember the last time they kissed. How long has it been now? He had to stop counting the hours; there were too many and he lost track.

"Promise me," she whispers once more, and he can hear the tears coming back again. Her hands have grown insistent on his face, her nails digging into the back of his jaw. She is so close he can feel her chest against his, her nose touching his.

And he can imagine what might happen, if he promised. He can picture the short moment of disbelief, followed quickly by an intense wave of relief. He can see how it will consume her—how she will hug him, hold him, maybe even laugh. How she will pull back and look at him, happy for the first time in months. She might kiss him, he thinks, feeling himself grow delirious at the thought. She might not stop kissing him.

If he promises her what she wants to hear, they might be able to find a way to come back together—perhaps only physically, but it would be a step in the right direction nonetheless. It'd be breaking the ice; it'd be superseding the old memories. It'd be a way to recover. It'd be a way to allow her to feel something besides pain, for the first time in months.

But he can't lie to her.

He opens his eyes, and it must be there, written across his face, because her hands drop at once, without him even having to say anything. Her chin starts shaking, her hands, and then she shoves him—hard. He stumbles back, only barely managing to catch himself on the kitchen counter so he doesn't fall to the floor.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" she demands, her voice cracking on every other word, the tears springing into being again.

"I—" He doesn't know what he's saying, only that he needs to speak, but she won't let him.

"I ask you one thing! One goddamn thing!" She moves to shove him again, but somehow, even with his busted ribs, he manages to duck out of the way. For a second, she stares at him in fury, and he thinks she might actually chase after him, but then her face crumples. She starts to sway, and he moves towards her, frightened she might pass out, but she shakes her head, tears flying. "Don't touch me," she cries, and reaches out for the counter instead, to support herself.

He can't look at her, but he can't look away, either.

"You've always been stubborn," she whispers, glaring at him through her tears. "You've always been certain you know best. That's a part of you I can't change, and that's—I understand that, okay? I don't like it, but I can live with it. I know where it comes from. But this—this recklessness—" She shakes her head sharply. "I can't live with this, Kurt. I can't spend every day wondering if this is the day you're going to get yourself killed out there. I can't spend every day..." For a second, her eyes grow so wide, so pained, that he thinks she really is going to fall to the floor in sobs. But she just looks at him. And somehow, her ability to still hold herself in check is worse. "I can't spend every day wondering exactly when it was I stopped being enough for you. I can't do it anymore, Kurt.

"And I get it," she continues in a whisper before he can take a breath, let alone say a word. "I get that you're grieving. I know you want your baby; I do too. It isn't fair what happened to us. But right now..." She shakes her head. "I can't give that to you. I need you to recognize that that is something _I cannot do_. And I need you to stop blaming me for that."

"Jane, I'm not—"

"But you are!" she cries. "Every time you put yourself in danger like you did on Tuesday, _you are blaming me_. I don't care if you do it consciously or not, you're still doing it, Kurt. You're deciding that it doesn't matter anymore, what you do with your life. You run into danger and you leave me behind and you don't for a second— _not for one single second_ —think about what that does to me! What it would be like for me, if I lost you. You are my only family—why can't you respect that? _You're all I have_."

"That isn't true," he protests, but even as he says the words, he knows they're a lie. She may have friends, yes, people that would look after her should he be gone, but she doesn't have _family._ In all the years since she popped up in Times Square out of nowhere, not one person has come to claim her. No one has matched to her DNA. No one has called and said, "Hey, that lost woman on the news? I recognize her. I know her." No one. Out of seven billion people, not one came forward.

"Tell me what you were thinking," she whispers, pulling him back. "When you ran into that building, tell me what was on your mind. What did you think you were doing?"

"My job," he answers at once, a wave of appreciation for her passing through him: this subject he can tackle, and they both know it. "I was thinking, I know our guys are in there, and I can get to them. I can finish this now. I was thinking I wanted to get the job done."

"You ignored the warnings that the rest of us weren't close enough to help. You ignored the fact that you knew you were outnumbered, that you knew they would disarm you immediately. The best hope you had was of getting one shot off, maybe two. And even if they were perfect, you still had four guys coming at you. You had to have known that. You had to have known—"

"So what if I knew?" he cuts in. He can't listen to her judge him like this anymore; there's a reason he's in charge and she's not. He does not take kindly to her criticism. "Who gives a shit if I knew what was waiting for me?"

"I do! Jesus Christ, Kurt, _I do, I care,_ that's the point! You went in that building, basically unarmed, against six suspects, four at best, and _you knew_ —you knew what would happen. You knew you were probably going to die."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I want to know why. I want to know what you were thinking that made you believe, for even a second, that sacrificing yourself like you did was a good option."

For a moment, he doesn't speak. He simply stares at her, and she waits.

"You weren't thinking of work," she says quietly, "so we can cut that bullshit right there. And you weren't thinking of me— _obviously_." He opens his mouth to protest, but she continues: "I don't even think you were thinking of yourself. But I do think you were thinking of something. Something very specific."

She looks up at him and takes one step, two, towards him. She is still feet away, but that look in her eyes, and those words coming out of her mouth, makes him want to run. She's going to trap him. And he can't think fast enough to get out of it. His ribs throb in time with his fear, his heart echoing their thunderous cry.

"Look at me," she commands softly. "Look at me and tell me what you were thinking."

All he can think to do is shake his head. He can't speak. He wants to disappear. He wants to be back in that building; he wants those men to be beating the shit out of him; he wants them to kill him this time. He just wants all of this to be over.

"You want me to tell you what you were thinking? Do you really want to make me say it? Because I know, Kurt. I feel it, too. Trust me when I say I feel it, too."

She's too close again. He shuts his eyes, turning his head away from her, but she refuses to let him hide. She takes ahold of his face again, nowhere near gently like she had before, and forces it forward. He keeps his eyes clamped shut, but it's hardly a foolproof mode of defense: he can still sense her in front of him; when she presses her face against his, he can feel the tears there, cold and wet and sharp. They melt from her skin into his, and fall down his cheeks as if they were his own.

"I know what you were thinking," she whispers. Her hands slide from his cheeks to the back of his neck to the back of his head. She cradles him to her, her elbows digging into his back, but he doesn't so much as attempt to pull away. "I know what you were feeling. I know you wanted to see him. I know you weighed your options. I know you decided it was a fair trade."

"No," he chokes out, somehow finding a voice. "No, that's not it. That isn't it. I didn't think that."

"It's okay." She hugs him harder, her hands atop his head, pulling him down to her level. "It's okay. I get like that sometimes, too. I want to see him, too. I do plenty of things I'm not proud of, just to get a glimpse of him."

"You don't do what I do."

And there it is.

For a moment, he imagines she'll pull back in triumph: _Ha! Got you!_ For a second, he wonders if she'll walk right out the door.

But nothing changes. She keeps hugging him, keeps holding him, and when he finally breaks down and starts crying too, she shushes him gently into silence. She says nothing more, not for what feels like hours, but in the silence, he can feel again her unspoken wants. She wants a promise, a guarantee. She wants to be assured she won't be left alone in this world, not again, not ever.

And he wants to give her all those things, he does. But stronger than his want to please her is his fear of letting her down. Because he knows, if he falls short on any one condition, she might never come back. She might be done; she might throw in the towel, too.

In the end, only one thing is true, will always be true, and so he says it as clearly and calmly as he can. He prays she will believe him, and that it will be enough—at least for now.

"I love you so much," he says.

He doesn't have anything else to give.


End file.
